their armies, and in this way the Romans had often already fought with them. Now they had crossed the Danube in great masses, and established themselves north of the Haemus; in so far as the Dacian war, as planned by Cæsar the father and then by the son, had doubtless for its object to gain the right bank of the lower Danube, it was not less directed against them than against the Dacian Moesians on the right bank. The Greek coast towns in the barbarian land, Odessus (near Varna), Tomis, Istropolis, hard pressed by these movements of the nations surging around them, were here as everywhere from the outset clients of the Romans. At the time of Caesar's dictatorship, when Burebista was at the height of his power, the Dacians had executed that fearful devastating raid along the coast as far down as Apollonia, the traces of which were not yet obliterated after a century and a half. It may probably have been this invasion that at first induced Caesar the elder to undertake the Dacian war; and after that the son now ruled also over Macedonia, he could not but feel himself under obligation to interfere here at once and with energy. The defeat which Cicero's colleague, Antonius, had sustained near Istropolis at the hands of the Bastarnae may be taken as a proof that these Greeks needed once more the aid of the Romans. [Sidenote: Subjugation of Moesia by Crassus.] In fact soon after the battle of Actium (725) {29.} Marcus Licinius Crassus, the grandson of him who had fallen at Carrhae, was sent by Caesar to Macedonia as governor, and charged now to carry out the campaign that had twice been hindered. The Bastarnae, who just then had invaded Thrace, submitted without resistance, when Crassus had them summoned to leave the Roman territory; but their retreat was not sufficient for the Roman. He, on his part, crossed the Haemus,[2] at the confluence of the Cibrus (Tzibritza) with the Danube, defeated the enemy, whose king, Deldo, was left on the field of battle; and, with the help of a Dacian prince adhering to the Romans, took prisoners all that had escaped from the battle and sought shelter in a neighbouring stronghold. Without offering further resistance the whole Moesian territory submitted to the conqueror of the Bastarnae. These returned next year to avenge the defeat which they had suffered; but they once more succumbed, and, with them, such of the Moesian tribes as had again taken up arms. Thus these enemies were once for all expelled from the right bank of the Danube, and the latter was entirely subjected to the Roman rule. At the same time the Thracians not hitherto subject were chastised, the national shrine of Dionysos was taken from the Bessi, and the administration of it was entrusted to the princes of the Odrysians, who generally from that time, under the protection of the Roman supreme power, exercised, or were assumed to exercise, supremacy over the Thracian tribes south of the Haemus. The Greek